Picked one up for a media PC but I couldn't resist having a play... and as there isn't much information about them here I thought I'd share my findings - sorry if its not the most readable.
SETUP
System Spec:
Gigabyte P35 DS3R
Core 2 Duo E6600
2x512Mb DDR2-4300 Value RAM
1x 160gig Seagate 7200.10
Generic 350Watt PSU
XpertVision *spit* 8500GT 256Mb DDR2 (Stock: 459 Core 400 Mem)
Some of the components fresh off the lorry from OCuk:
Inside the case:
Booted up and pretty quickly had the system up and running at 3.2gig (400*8) the value RAM managed 800MHz (from 266MHz at stock) nicely matching the FSB... some orthos and memtest later to make sure it was stable and I started on the GPU...
First run of 3d Marks 06 was pretty much as poor as I expected limping home at slightly over 2300 marks... but I set out to see what this card was capable of when pushed not stock so... on to...
OVERCLOCKING
I then started on the overclocking... was quite a long winded process so I'm not gonna go into the boring details for a card this far from bleeding edge.
After much testing the summary is it managed an impressive jump from 459 to 730MHz on the core 100% stable with just air cooling and no voltage increase.
Memory wasn't so happy with overclocking and while it would mostly do 432MHz in benchmarks some games, especially DX9 titles, didn't like it if it wasn't at the stock 400MHz. (See NOTE2 below)
The core would even run at upto 780MHz with only slight artifacting kicking in above 745MHz but would randomly crash above 730MHz.
BENCHMARKING
I'm not going to talk much about stock results as they are pretty pitiful and mostly somewhere between a 6800LE and a 6800GT...
3D Marks 06:
I went for broke - upped the CPU to 3.4gig and pushed the GPU as hard as possible to a point where it wasn't stable but could atleast pass 3D Marks 06 most attempts...
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2402000
Clocks:
Core 765 (756 Actual) (Shader Unit 1512)
Mem 445
Main Test Results:
3DMark Score 3185 3DMarks (Compare this to 2300 at stock)
SM 2.0 Score 1253 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1061 Marks
CPU Score 2968 Marks
I then dropped the GPU back to the highest stable settings:
Clocks:
Core 730 (729 Actual) (Shader Unit 1458)
Mem 432
Main Test Results:
3DMark Score 3101 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 1225 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1033 Marks
CPU Score 2804 Marks
One thing I did notice the streaming shader unit appears to be holding the core back once it goes over 1500MHz it seems to be the cause of instability rather than the core itself - which would seem to be backed up by the graphs in rivatuner which still show green on the core at 765MHz but yellow on the shader unit at anything above 1500.
3D Marks 03:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Scores here were worse than I expected... struggling to hit 10K with a final score of 10612 - most 6800 cards will comfortably hit 12K.
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5433100
Unigine:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Well it survived...
http://aten-hosted.com/images/00000.jpg
...but only just.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Can't really benchmark this reliably yet as its only in beta with no standard meaningful timedemo facility. I ran the game with Normal Quality, 1280x1024, 4x FSAA and 16x AF and once the map was loaded clicked spectator and didn't move the mouse so its on the initial view...
http://aten-hosted.com/images/shot00002.jpg
While actually playing with those settings it would often drop to 20fps in firefights...
Using minspec in the game (everything on minimal) and 640x480 with no FSAA and no AF however gave a suprising result - over 300fps in the same view compared to 150fps for a 6800 Ultra and 440fps (CPU limited) for a 7950GX2 using the same minspec config. Further testing I found the card gave quite playable fps even in ultra quality settings aslong as you kept the resolution low (upto 1024x768) and keep the FSAA off or to a minimum.
CONCLUSION
I haven't presented any information on the media playback capabilities of this card as it wasn't the focus of my testing - however it does very well in those areas with HDCP, Dual Link DVI and decent hardware decoding capabilities and at £40-50 is perfectly suited to this... It will come as no suprise to anyone that this card is poor at best for gaming but it overclocks well with the core increasing by 60% and staying stable giving a 54% performance increase in 3D Marks over stock and a 30-40% performance increase in games. If you keep the resolution and anti-aliasing to low settings you can push the other quality settings up high and still get playable framerates.
NOTE: The card runs very quiet at stock with idle temps about 50C even with extreme overclocking the core never went above 69-70C.
NOTE2: From testing I get the impression the memory on the card is of mixed quality with some of the chips capable of 500MHz but atleast 1-2 of the chips barely able to do 400MHz - causing unpredictable memory stability.
SETUP
System Spec:
Gigabyte P35 DS3R
Core 2 Duo E6600
2x512Mb DDR2-4300 Value RAM
1x 160gig Seagate 7200.10
Generic 350Watt PSU
XpertVision *spit* 8500GT 256Mb DDR2 (Stock: 459 Core 400 Mem)
Some of the components fresh off the lorry from OCuk:
Inside the case:
Booted up and pretty quickly had the system up and running at 3.2gig (400*8) the value RAM managed 800MHz (from 266MHz at stock) nicely matching the FSB... some orthos and memtest later to make sure it was stable and I started on the GPU...
First run of 3d Marks 06 was pretty much as poor as I expected limping home at slightly over 2300 marks... but I set out to see what this card was capable of when pushed not stock so... on to...
OVERCLOCKING
I then started on the overclocking... was quite a long winded process so I'm not gonna go into the boring details for a card this far from bleeding edge.
After much testing the summary is it managed an impressive jump from 459 to 730MHz on the core 100% stable with just air cooling and no voltage increase.
Memory wasn't so happy with overclocking and while it would mostly do 432MHz in benchmarks some games, especially DX9 titles, didn't like it if it wasn't at the stock 400MHz. (See NOTE2 below)
The core would even run at upto 780MHz with only slight artifacting kicking in above 745MHz but would randomly crash above 730MHz.
BENCHMARKING
I'm not going to talk much about stock results as they are pretty pitiful and mostly somewhere between a 6800LE and a 6800GT...
3D Marks 06:
I went for broke - upped the CPU to 3.4gig and pushed the GPU as hard as possible to a point where it wasn't stable but could atleast pass 3D Marks 06 most attempts...
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2402000
Clocks:
Core 765 (756 Actual) (Shader Unit 1512)
Mem 445
Main Test Results:
3DMark Score 3185 3DMarks (Compare this to 2300 at stock)
SM 2.0 Score 1253 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1061 Marks
CPU Score 2968 Marks
I then dropped the GPU back to the highest stable settings:
Clocks:
Core 730 (729 Actual) (Shader Unit 1458)
Mem 432
Main Test Results:
3DMark Score 3101 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 1225 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1033 Marks
CPU Score 2804 Marks
One thing I did notice the streaming shader unit appears to be holding the core back once it goes over 1500MHz it seems to be the cause of instability rather than the core itself - which would seem to be backed up by the graphs in rivatuner which still show green on the core at 765MHz but yellow on the shader unit at anything above 1500.
3D Marks 03:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Scores here were worse than I expected... struggling to hit 10K with a final score of 10612 - most 6800 cards will comfortably hit 12K.
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5433100
Unigine:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Well it survived...
http://aten-hosted.com/images/00000.jpg
...but only just.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:
Core: 730
Mem: 432
Can't really benchmark this reliably yet as its only in beta with no standard meaningful timedemo facility. I ran the game with Normal Quality, 1280x1024, 4x FSAA and 16x AF and once the map was loaded clicked spectator and didn't move the mouse so its on the initial view...
http://aten-hosted.com/images/shot00002.jpg
While actually playing with those settings it would often drop to 20fps in firefights...
Using minspec in the game (everything on minimal) and 640x480 with no FSAA and no AF however gave a suprising result - over 300fps in the same view compared to 150fps for a 6800 Ultra and 440fps (CPU limited) for a 7950GX2 using the same minspec config. Further testing I found the card gave quite playable fps even in ultra quality settings aslong as you kept the resolution low (upto 1024x768) and keep the FSAA off or to a minimum.
CONCLUSION
I haven't presented any information on the media playback capabilities of this card as it wasn't the focus of my testing - however it does very well in those areas with HDCP, Dual Link DVI and decent hardware decoding capabilities and at £40-50 is perfectly suited to this... It will come as no suprise to anyone that this card is poor at best for gaming but it overclocks well with the core increasing by 60% and staying stable giving a 54% performance increase in 3D Marks over stock and a 30-40% performance increase in games. If you keep the resolution and anti-aliasing to low settings you can push the other quality settings up high and still get playable framerates.
NOTE: The card runs very quiet at stock with idle temps about 50C even with extreme overclocking the core never went above 69-70C.
NOTE2: From testing I get the impression the memory on the card is of mixed quality with some of the chips capable of 500MHz but atleast 1-2 of the chips barely able to do 400MHz - causing unpredictable memory stability.
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Would have been cool if you could have picked one of them up tbh! Nice review tho, and good comparison with the frame rates, i liked that!